Judy

26 May 2026

I had never experienced loss before last monday, May 18th, not in a way that really affects my life much. It's one thing to intellectualize grief and to know, logically, how it works and what to do about it, but it's another entirely to experience the complex emotions surrounding it. I had time to prepare. The older my grandma got and the less she remembered about the past, the more I thought "it's only a matter of time." Even when she got diagnosed with bladder cancer and we found out it had spread throughout her body in early February of this year, I began really preparing myself mentally. Picturing my life without her. Being ok with it.

When it actually happened (Monday, May 18th - Mt. St. Helens Day) my first feeling was shock. This really just happened 30 minutes before getting a text from my dad. I'm at work- can I keep a straight face? I think that first day I mostly just felt numb. I didn't cry at all. I asked for the next day off in case I was going to be a mess the next day, but I wasn't. I got pretty worried that I wouldn't react to her death like I hadn't reacted much to my grandpa's death, as I wasn't as close to him.

I am quickly finding out that it's not the initial shock that was waiting to corner me. It's the quiet hours when I'm alone with my thoughts. The moments I think about her voice, her bedroom that still smells like her. Realizing over and over and over again that she's not with me anymore like tiny cuts that grow to become gaping wounds. I'm finding that these wounds are what people talk about when they talk about experiencing "waves" of grief.

On Saturday I drove to her house to help my dad go through some of her things. I took some of her clothes and a few knickknacks that I always loved. I also took her diary from 1952, when she was 12 years old. It's not full - she only wrote in it for a few months. Now I have all these little pieces of her in my apartment (and will inherit more) that I just... can't believe are in my apartment and not with her. Because she's not here to use them.